Environmental impact assessment of olive pomace oil biodiesel production and consumption: A comparative lifecycle assessment

Mohammad Ali Rajaeifar, Asadolah Akram, Barat Ghobadian, Shahin Rafiee, Reinout Heijungs and Meisam Tabatabaei

Energy, 2016, vol. 106, issue C, 87-102

Abstract: The well-to-wheel environmental impacts of olive pomace oil biodiesel (B20 and B100) and conventional petroleum diesel were compared using life cycle assessment. Moreover, energy and economic analyses of olive pomace oil biodiesel production was conducted throughout its life cycle. Human Health, Ecosystem Quality, Climate Change and Resources were the selected end-point impact categories. Comparing biodiesel with petroleum diesel, significant environmental tradeoffs exist between the Climate Change and Resources damage categories. Moreover, biodiesel was found to require some corrective practices (in the view of agricultural and combustion stages) in order to be more eco-friendly in all the mentioned damage categories. Having pursued the suggestions of this study, for the B100, the minimum reduction rates of 30–32% and 24–26% in the Human Health and Ecosystem Quality damage categories could be expected, respectively. While for the B20, these reduction rates would be at least 19–22% and 14–16%, respectively. This could be promising especially for the B20 blend as a good alternative for petroleum diesel. On the other hand, lifecycle energy assessment revealed promising energy indices (e.g., fossil energy ratio of 1.22–1.33). Finally, economic analysis showed a benefit-to-cost ratio of 1.45 revealing the economic viability of olive pomace oil biodiesel production.

Keywords: Biodiesel production; Environmental life cycle assessment; Olive pomace oil biodiesel; Ultrasound-assisted transesterification; Life cycle energy assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544216302547
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:106:y:2016:i:c:p:87-102

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.03.010

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().